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Standing in chains before a hostile crowd in Jerusalem, Paul does something unexpected. He does not defend himself with arguments. He tells a story — his own. Acts 22 records Paul’s testimony to the mob that had just tried to kill him, and in many ways it is a deliberate echo of chapter 9, where his conversion was first narrated. What Paul offers here is not abstract doctrine but personal witness, and in it we find one of the richest theological moments in the whole book of Acts.

The scene opens with a small but telling detail. When Paul addresses the crowd in Hebrew, their own language, the uproar quiets. He begins, “Brothers and fathers,” placing himself among his hearers rather than above or against them. This matters, because Paul was often accused of betraying his own people. The truth was more balanced: Paul remained a devoted Jew who loved his people and their traditions deeply. What he insisted on was simply that Gentile believers should not be bound to Jewish ceremonial law. He loved his own people, and he loved the Gentiles — including, in a sense, most of us reading this today, since we are not Jewish by birth. When that love became grounds for false accusation, we see a familiar temptation: the either/or mentality that says if you are not entirely with us, you must be against us. For Paul, it was never either/or. It was both.

He goes on to lay out his credentials: trained at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the great rabbis of the age. To sit “at someone’s feet” meant total submission as a disciple. Paul mentions this not merely to defend himself, but to make a deeper point — his radical embrace of the Gentiles could not have come from ordinary human reasoning. He had been a zealous Jew, a persecutor of the Church, trained by the finest teacher of his generation. For a man with that formation to be transformed so completely, something greater than himself had to be at work.

There is a lesson here for anyone who wants to share their faith. Doctrine matters — the Trinity, the person of Christ, the Eucharist — and explaining it well is often necessary. But sometimes nothing is as persuasive as simply telling our own story. “I used to be careless about my faith, and now I pray the rosary every day — what happened?” Paul’s testimony reminds us that our own history of grace can preach louder than argument.

Paul then recounts the road to Damascus: the blinding light, and the voice that called him by name — “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Sir 27:30 – 28:7
Second Reading: Rom 14:7-9
Gospel Reading: Mt 18:21-35

“Pardon, and you shall be pardoned,” say this Sunday’s Readings. “If you do not pardon, you will not be pardoned.”

Jesus made this point repeatedly. After teaching us to say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he added, “If you forgive the faults of others, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours. If you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you.”

We find it hard to accept this teaching. One reason is that our neighbours’ faults seem so great, while ours seem so small.

We probably all have someone who makes our life much more difficult than it need be: a parent, spouse, child, boss, co-worker, employee, etc. We see the fatal flaw in his character which brings all our efforts to grief. We have tried talking to him, but he refuses to listen, or shouts us down, or agrees to change but does not.

If we are not mistaken, we are seeing what God sees in this person: what He sees when He looks into any home, school, parish, or workplace. It is this, no matter how bad it is, that He is willing to forgive.

Now when God looks into any home, school, parish, or workplace, He sees another person, one whom we do not see: ourself. We may be quite certain that, just as in other people, there is something in us on which our neighbours’ best efforts are always shipwrecked. They have tried to tell us about it, but we did not understand them, or we thought they were mistaken or simply in a bad mood. This, too, is what God is willing to forgive.

“How small the debts men owe to us, how great our debt to You,” we sing in the hymn. To help us realize this fact and correct the bias we have toward ourselves simply because they are ourselves, we must be careful to interpret our neighbours’ thoughts, words, and deeds as favorably as possible. “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favourable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

At the same time, we must be careful not to minimize our own sins. If we are not conscious of our guilt, then, though we are part of the world Jesus came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed.

It is good to think of our own sins with the horror with which we think of our neighbours’ sins, especially the sins they commits to which we are not tempted.

For years, people have told Deacon Zak Santiago he needed to write a screenplay about his life, but he never felt it was the right time. After years of half-commitments and other delays, the sign he was waiting for arrived when John Cassini, his friend, producer and actor, gave it to him, straight: “We gotta make a show about you, man!”

That show, christened Deacon, is now in development at Front Street Pictures and will be introduced to potential partners at the Toronto International Film Festival Market in September. 

The story will follow the life of Santiago “Santi” Luna, a former boxer and street criminal who finds redemption as a Catholic deacon. 

“I’ve been trying to develop a show about some things in my life for a number of years,” Deacon Santiago told The B.C. Catholic. Originally, he thought this might take the form of a reality show centred on his life as a DJ, but he had to place the idea on that back burner “when the call to the Church [permanent diaconate] came,” he said. 

Making a television show, even if a miniseries, is a lot of hard work, but he feels confident that this is where the Holy Spirit is leading him. “The Spirit told me this is going to tortuous,” he said, but “I just trusted and it felt right.” 

This was largely due of Cassini and Jonathan Lloyd Walker’s support and encouragement.  Walker is a producer and showrunner of series such as Amazon’s House of David.  “With them it just felt peaceful,” Deacon Santiago said. 

While Deacon draws inspiration from Santiago’s life, the series will be a fictional drama that uses the unique intersection of Santiago’s experiences to explore redemption, forgiveness, grief, community and the belief that no one should be defined by the worst thing they have ever done.

“I’m bringing everything I know,” he said about the creative process. 

“At its heart, Deacon is about showing up for people, especially when they feel forgotten,” said Santiago, and it’s about “believing that everyone deserves the opportunity to find their way back.”

“It’s not that people aren’t wounded, or this character isn’t wounded – I am; you are – but we also don’t want to make a show that’s corny in any way,” he said. “I don’t want [the protagonist] to be a figure that isn’t true to the faith … Goodness is there; [Christ’s] goodness is there. Jesus is the driving force behind everything.” 

The story won’t shy away from the difficulties of life. “It’s going to be real life – like my life, like the streets of Vancouver; like our parishioner’s lives.

In this episode, we continue our Lenten book study on “The Way of Trust and Love” and focus on Chapter 3: Being Reconciled to Our Weakness. We talk about how our struggles with ourselves often spill over into our relationships with others and how learning to accept our own weakness can soften our hearts towards the weakness we see in those around us. We also reflect on the tension between accepting our littleness and desiring real conversion, how we become more aware of our imperfections as we draw closer to the Lord, and the gift of community in helping us clearly see our lives. This week, we invite you to receive God’s love, extend that love to yourself, and then offer it freely to others.

In this episode, we continue our Lenten book study on “The Way of Trust and Love” and focus on Chapter 2: An Elevator for Small Children. We talk about the quiet places of discouragement, and self-reliance that keep us striving instead of surrendering. We also reflect about how radical dependence on God is not laziness, the subtle ways we resist being little before a loving Father, and how our poverty is a doorway into deeper trust. This week, we invite you to fall into the Father’s arms, allow Him to pick you up, and rest in the One who delights in you.

What would it be like to truly be free, from sin, from fear, and from anything else we can’t say no to? In the letter to the Galatians, St. Paul insists that this freedom is something we can realistically obtain through Christ. 

In this episode, Fr. Columba Jordan dives into the letter to the Galatians, exploring St. Paul’s account of the freedom Jesus promised us, revealing that with courage & love we can overcome the fears that hold us back. 

As Paul made his way toward Jerusalem, prophets warned him again and again, through the Spirit, of what awaited him: arrest. Yet Paul’s decision to go was itself made under the guidance of that same Spirit. At Tyre, the whole community—women and children included—knelt together on the beach to pray with him before he sailed. Describing this farewell, Saint Luke seems to echo Old Testament language about the daughters of Tyre, and St. Bede concludes that no city had sent the apostle on his way with greater kindness.

Further along, we meet Philip the evangelist, whose four daughters were gifted with prophecy, and a prophet named Agabus, newly arrived from Judea. Agabus did not simply speak his prophecy—he acted it out. Taking Paul’s belt, he bound his own hands and feet and declared: “Thus says the Holy Spirit: This is the way the Jews will bind the owner of this belt in Jerusalem, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles.”

This journey deliberately echoes the journey of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel—and since both books share an author, the echo is intentional, not accidental. A great structural feature of the Gospel is that ten chapters, from chapter 9 to chapter 19, are devoted to Jesus “on the way to Jerusalem,” with many of his most important teachings set within that journey. Luke portrays Jesus there as the Prophet marching toward his own death.

Now Paul does something strikingly similar. He too marches toward Jerusalem, toward arrest and being “handed over to the Gentiles”—language that recalls Jesus’ own three predictions of his passion. Prophecy after prophecy foretells Paul’s coming suffering in terms that recall the suffering of Christ himself.

“What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? I am prepared not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). When these prophecies came, the disciples begged Paul not to go. This was his answer. He would not let natural affection, however sincere, hold him back from bearing witness to Christ; loyalty to Jesus mattered more. Convinced this was God’s call, he continued on his way.

The scene recalls the Gospel in which Peter’s very human affection tried to hold Jesus back from his own passion, and Jesus rebuked him: “Get behind me; you are a stumbling block.” Paul, in imitation of his Master, would not let human affection stand in the way of his mission.

In the end, the community stopped pleading and simply said, “The Lord’s will be done” (Acts 21:14)—an echo of Jesus” own prayer in Gethsemane: “Not my will but yours be done.” To accept suffering, ultimately, is to accept it in that same spirit of surrender.

23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Ez 33:7-9
Second Reading: Rom 13:8-10
Gospel Reading: Mt 18:15-20

Think of some truth about which you are absolutely sure. It might be that the brakes on your car are faulty, that tobacco and other drugs harm the body, or that nutritious food and regular exercise are beneficial.

Now suppose you see someone acting, or about to act, in ignorance of this truth. Can you keep silent? If you say nothing, and the ignorance causes harm, are you not to blame for it, at least partly?

Imagine the reproaches. “You knew that the brakes were faulty, and you let me drive the car!” “You knew that drugs were addictive and harmful, and you let me experiment with them!” “You knew the importance of nutrition and exercise, and you brought me up to laze around and eat junk food!”

With this in mind, consider this Sunday’s Readings. If “you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand,” God tells Ezekiel.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” Jesus says. “If you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you.”

He is speaking to us. Our duty to warn our neighbours about sin is part of the love we owe them.

Can we be as sure about right and wrong as we are about the truth of the examples we started with?

Yes. From the beginning, God wrote, deep in our conscience, in our “most secret core,” a law which calls us to love him and our neighbour for his sake: that is, to obey the Commandments. Inwardly, at the right moment, the law tells us to do this or shun that.

Our conscience can be “by degrees almost blinded” through sinful habits. However, God has not only implanted his law in our hearts, but also reminds us of it: first through the Ten Commandments and second through the Church.

Jesus gave his apostles the task of “promoting and preserving the faith and the moral life,” and their successors continue this task, Pope St. John Paul II said in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendour of Truth”). The Church, then, is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth, including the truth regarding moral action.”

However, all Christians, “by the example of their lives and the witness of their word,” have an obligation “to manifest the new man which they have put on in Baptism and to reveal the power of the Holy Spirit by whom they were strengthened at Confirmation,” says Ad Gentes (“To the Nations”).

You have an abundance of workers: stonecutters, masons, carpenters, and all kinds of artisans without number…
— 1 Chronicles 22:15

I had the pleasure of spending time with my children in the family home recently after it was heavily damaged by a broken pipe which flooded floorboards on two floors and impacted ceilings and walls. As such, I found myself doing a lot of restoration work, which led me to renovate other parts of the house, inside and out. Although I found myself putting in exhausting 8 hour days during my vacation, I actually found that I was restored from the work. 

I grew up with a father who was always building, and over the years I have loved to be in my workshop, making furniture, or repairing plumbing and wiring, re-erecting fences and more. This small interlude turned into an unexpectedly therapeutic change of pace from the office work that frames my usual workday.

In an early novel of mine, I dedicated a chapter to my father’s proclivity to build and expand our rickety family home. His default quote was always, ‘measure twice, cut once.’ We were relatively poor, and my father’s old hardware store was precariously perched on the precipice of bankruptcy. To survive, we needed to expand the building so that we could diversify what we sold, but we couldn’t afford the permits or navigate the regulations that prescribed what could or couldn’t be done to an existing building. As such, my dad would wait until the weekend, when the inspectors weren’t working, and we would build as much as we humanly could, always ensuring that whatever extension we began that weekend was ‘finished’ for all intents and purposes. Such were the rules, then, that if it was considered complete, an expansion couldn’t be removed or fined.

In my novel Flying in Silence, the scene unfolds comically. When the inspector cornered my father for building one extension, he simply called it a courtyard. “Very fashionable. We’ll have plants out here.” A month later we threw a roof over the new addition. The inspector ranted. “This is not a courtyard. It has a roof!” My father smiled patiently. “It’s a covered courtyard. Very European.” The inspector fumed. “Where’s your permit?” to which my father, rather logically I thought, responded, “Why do I need a permit? The building is finished.” The inspector always left exhausted. “It’s always finished with you. But it never stops!” 

And he was right. The small square of a store that was initially also our home, grew tentacles and limbs, swelling upward and down, a basement here, an apartment there. One year, when we ran out of timber, my father ripped out the second-story balcony.

Acts 20 finds Paul on the move, setting his face toward Jerusalem, fully aware that suffering and arrest await him there. What strikes us first, though, is not his destination but his company. Paul does not travel alone. He is surrounded by companions drawn from the very churches he had planted along his missionary journeys — a reminder that Paul’s apostolate was never a solo performance but one carried out in community, alongside fellow labourers he himself had formed. Even under the shadow of what lay ahead in Jerusalem, Paul kept the young Church’s growing custom of gathering for the Eucharist wherever he went.

That custom gives us one of the most vivid scenes in all of Acts. At Troas, the disciples gathered upstairs on the first day of the week, lamps burning, and Paul — knowing he would be leaving the next day — preached long into the night. A young man named Eutychus, seated in the window, was overcome by sleep and fell three storeys to the ground below. He was picked up dead. Paul went down, bent over him, took him in his arms, and restored him to life. Then, remarkably, Paul went back upstairs, broke bread, and continued preaching before a community now transformed from grief to joy.

Luke is a careful storyteller, and he loves to let his Gospel and Acts echo one another. An upper room, the first day of the week, the breaking of bread: this scene is built to remind us of the resurrection of Jesus himself. Even a death in the middle of the gathering could not stop the word from being preached or the bread from being broken — the two resumed as soon as they possibly could. It is worth pausing on that. When we come to Mass, we too receive both the word and the Bread of Life. Both are life-giving in themselves. But how much life we actually draw from them depends, as it did for the disciples at Troas, on the openness and disposition of our own hearts.

This passage is also one of the earliest pieces of evidence that the first Christians had already begun to set aside Sunday, rather than the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, as their day of worship — because Sunday is both the day of the Resurrection and the day of Pentecost. Interestingly, the older Jewish practice of beginning a feast the evening before never disappeared; it lives on in the Church’s own liturgical life, and remains especially vivid in the Eastern Churches, where the liturgical day traditionally begins around four in the afternoon. In many Eastern parishes, the faithful can choose between the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning or the Vigil the evening before, sometimes called an all-night vigil.